Using Communication Skills to Enact Change

I have never been the type of person who is comfortable speaking in front of a crowd; I typically pace back and forth and play with my hair while my heart races and my body overheats.  I have always envied those who appear to have a natural ability to raise their hand and answer questions asked in class and who jump at the chance to share their opinion in front of a group of people, often strangers.  I, on the other hand, am the silent observer amongst a crowd who only speaks out when spoken to directly.  The only exception to this is when I am in the presence of a group of children, only then does my anxiety and hesitation subside and my confidence and persistence rise.

Confidence and persistence are two communication skills that I believe are important for a person to embody when seeking policy change.  They must have confidence in their knowledge of the topic they are speaking about and persistence to present this knowledge to any audience and despite any resistance.  In order to improve on these skills myself, I feel that preparation is key.  Just as I research the current theme of my classroom’s curriculum to plan activities for each day, I must research current issues to confidently understand the reasons why they need to change.  And just as I plan a variety of activities to present the information related to each theme, I must deliver the facts surrounding each policy issue in a persistent manner to everyone it impacts.

I hope my own skills of being confident and persistent when speaking in front of a crowd (and not just one of children) continues to grow as I further my career as a professional in the early childhood field.  How confident and persistent are you when communicating with others in a public setting?

Social Media's Influence on Policy Issues

When thinking about the many social mediums that are available to the public today, early childhood professionals must be cautious when choosing a media to use to broadcast their policy issues.  Many social mediums require a person to create an account, including a username and password, as well as to provide some personal information.  This fact often deters a person from using a particular social medium, which in turn could limit the number of people that early childhood professionals can reach.  For this reason, I would choose blogging and YouTube as the social media tools to communicate my policy issue, as both are free to the public to view.

Changing the ways in which school districts contract with outside agencies to provide special education services to preschool age children is a sensitive issue to both parents and early childhood professionals.  However, their personal experiences with the special education process are invaluable and could be shared on a blog or on YouTube in the form of written or videotaped interviews.  A parent’s journey from referring their child to the Committee on Preschool Special Education (CPSE) to the moment their child begins to receive services could be documented and followed by each visitor to the website.  The visitors, or audience, of both social media could include children, parents, educators, and policymakers.

Through a blog and YouTube, a child (with parental supervision) could learn about the various special education services from other children through stories, pictures, or videos.  Parents can share experiences, provide advice to one another, as well as ask questions and offer answers in the comments section found on each website.  Educators and policymakers would benefit from reading both the child and the parent perspectives of the preschool special education process, as they could become more aware of what is currently working and what may need to be modified in the future.

Blogging and YouTube are two social mediums that can reach a significant number of children, parents, professionals, and policymakers in the early childhood field today.  Both websites are free to use for the public and can be viewed on computers, as well as any handheld device.  The only drawback to both websites, as with any website, is determining the most effective method of inviting the public to view them.  How do you find the websites that interest you?  Is it through email?  A link found on a website you frequent?  Or do you find websites in print, like in newspapers or pamphlets?

From the past to the present to the future: Early childhood policies and systems

     Truthfully, this early childhood policies and systems course could not have started at a more perfect time for me.  Two weeks before this new school year began, the school district in which I work received a state grant changing our Universal Pre-Kindergarten program from one half day classroom to two full day classrooms.  Any professional in the education field could correctly predict that two weeks was certainly not enough time to organize or prepare for this change, and new challenges are still arising even as we are over two months in.  Much of the challenges that we have faced directly relate to the policies and systems regarding Universal Pre-Kindergarten in my state.  If research was conducted and knowledge was obtained about these policies and systems before we accepted the grant, many of the challenges could have easily been prevented, eliminating our overwhelming sense of confusion and frustration.

     As an early childhood teacher, and one who has personally been involved in the situation described above, I tend to struggle internally about how much I need to know about the policies and systems in my district, city, and state.  I question whether it is my responsibility or the responsibility of my administrators to know the specifics of each policy or system, and to what extent.  I was eager to begin this next course in my program as I believe that it will provide me with an understanding of both past and present early childhood policies and systems and the ways in which they can positively, or negatively, impact young children and their families.  I am hoping that throughout this course I will be able to accomplish the following three goals:

1.  To gain an understanding of how early childhood policies and systems are created and implemented so I can have an idea as to the process that it would take to potentially create and implement a new policy or system in my district, city, and/or state that could better the way Universal Pre-Kindergarten programs are developed and made available to all children who are eligible.

2.  To gain a general understanding about both the past and present early childhood policies and systems in order to comprehend the ways in which the policies and systems of the past have influenced those of the present, and the ways in which those of the present could possibly influence the policies and systems of the future.

3.  To become knowledgeable of the resources and politics outside of the current early childhood policies and systems that can strongly influence their success, and ultimately the positive or negative outcomes that it can have for young children and their families. 

With these three goals in mind as I move forward in this course, I am confident that my understanding about early childhood policies and systems will increase, and I am anticipating that the knowledge I will gain will assist me in becoming more effective in my role as a professional in the early childhood field.

Information and Insights

My experience throughout this course has been one that was filled with both information and insights.  The multitude of challenges that young children must face today was revealed to me in an eye-opening manner, and is truthfully something that I cannot close my mind to.  Knowing now that most young children will encounter challenges such as abuse, violence, death, poverty, disability, parental separation and divorce, as well as the need to learn another language or culture, signifies the importance of learning how these challenges impact a young child’s development and well-being.

Reading about the personal sacrifices and difficulties that the Lee family faced in the book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, as well as the stories that Marsha Shigeyo Hawley and Shaun-Adrian Chofla shared of their own childhood experiences, were the most influential to me.  It is easy to be provided with information through literature, but to hear someone’s thoughts and feelings of their own intimate experiences sheds a deeper light on the challenges they have faced and what has helped them move forward.  These three individual stories have motivated me to want to learn more about the lives of the students of whom I teach, and what I can do to provide them with a better chance for a successful future.

The opportunities and possibilities from the connections we make

For every individual person, a new day provides opportunities to learn new information or perspectives about various aspects of the world we live in.  As an educator in the early childhood field, I am able to learn from my students, their parents and families, my colleagues, and community members.  As a student in an online Education Specialist in Early Childhood degree program, I am able to learn from my classmates who are located in different states across the country.  The opportunities that these connections allow provide me with information and perspectives that help me in my current position and shed light onto the possibilities of my future.

From these connections, informal and formal conversations can emerge, often in the form of interviews.  This is precisely what occurred as I prepared to conduct my interviews for my Course Project (Major Assessment).  The two professionals that I have chosen to interview are colleagues of mine, but whom I do not interact with on a daily basis.  Their positions as our school district’s guidance counselor and psychologist mean that the amount of information that I can obtain will be limited due to confidentiality in regards to the specific students that they work with.  Despite this limitation, I am hoping to gain insight into the programs (for example, Banana Splits) that we currently have to support our students who have experienced, or are currently experiencing, the separation and divorce of their parents.       

The information that I have already obtained through my research on this topic for my Course Project (Major Assessment) has led me to learning how age, gender, and timing play a part in the impact that parental separation and divorce have on a young child’s development.  As I continue and complete my research on this topic, I would like to be guided by ideas from you on what information would help you support the children in your classroom or program who are experiencing the separation and divorce of their parents?

Parental separation and divorce: Its effect on our youngest student's lives and development

Children walk into our classrooms from homes that vary from the streets, to shelters, to apartments, and to houses, and the families with whom they share these homes differ as well.  Each child's family structure can significantly direct the path of their life and determine the degree to which they develop socially, emotionally, physically, and academically.  A particular type of family structure that is present in many of our children's lives today is one that is impacted by parental separation and divorce.  I have seen an increase in the number of my own pre-kindergarten students whose parents have chosen to separate or divorce, as well as the level of impact that it has had on their day-to-day interactions and participation in the classroom.  This is precisely the reason as to why I have chosen to learn more about this challenge and the effect that it can have on a child’s life and their earliest stages of development.    

Experiencing my own parent's divorce at the age of seventeen has allowed me to understand how this challenge can effect the life and development of a female teenager.  My own experience has also guided me to understand that parental separation and divorce can effect each child involved in a remarkably different way, depending upon the child's gender and age.  On a personal level, I can relate to my students who are impacted by this challenge to some extent, but my knowledge of how this challenge effects such young children is limited.  Therefore, I am motivated to research this challenge and to share the information that I learn with you.

I welcome any comments or suggestions pertaining to your own experience with working with children who have a family structure that has been impacted by parental separation and divorce.  I have often wondered how this challenge impacts a young child’s ability to focus in the classroom?  For example, if their thoughts are focused on a fight they overheard between their mother and father the night before.  Or how their feelings will be effected throughout holiday celebrations?  For example, on Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mother’s Day, or Father’s Day.

There are many aspects of a child’s life, both at home and at school, that must be taken into consideration as we learn of the challenges that they face while they are in our care inside our classrooms.  But how do we, as early childhood educators, support these fragile children in a way that makes them feel safe, and more importantly, happy?

Instructing dual language learners: Are we prepared?

The Philippines.  Bangladesh.  Myanmar.  Laos.  Nepal.  These are only a handful of the countries where both past and current pre-kindergarten students of mine were born, or where their home languages and cultural backgrounds originate from.  Recently, I have learned that the US Census Bureau "projects that by the 2030s, children whose home language is other than English will increase from roughly 22 percent to 40 percent of the school-age population" (Magruder, Hayslip, Espinosa, & Matera, 2013).  This prediction was alarming but significant to me as these children will most likely enroll in a pre-kindergarten program prior to starting elementary school.  And for school districts like my own, English as a Second Language services are not provided for pre-kindergarten students, which means that the responsibility of meeting their diverse needs falls upon my hands.  

The notion that the number of these young children could potentially double in the next fifteen years is troubling, as there is no sole method of preparing their teachers for dual language instruction.  I fortunately have found many suggestions and strategies that can be implemented in the classroom, and many were provided by one particular early childhood professional, Karen Nemeth.  Upon further investigation I learned that Karen Nemeth is an author, presenter, consultant, and founder of the website, LanguageCastle, which contains numerous resources for anyone who works with dual language learners.  She also writes her own blog which contains further information on specific topics of interest, http://www.languagecastle.com/blog/.  As I have read many of her articles, it is an immediate plan of mine to explore the books that she has written, and possibly purchase the ones that are relevant to my current position.  As I have personally seen the number of dual language learners in my own pre-kindergarten classroom increase year after year, I know that I must prepare myself with the knowledge necessary to provide them with the best possible educational experiences.

If dual language learners are present in your classroom or program, what resources do you use to provide for their instruction?  Are you familiar with the work of Karen Nemeth?  Please share your experiences below!

Reference:

Magruder, E. S., Hayslip, W. W., Espinosa, L. M., & Matera, C. (2013). Many Languages, One Teacher: Supporting Language and Literacy Development for Preschool Dual Language Learners. Young Children, 68(1), 8-12, 15.       

An Interest in Pinterest

For those of you that may not be familiar with Pinterest, it is a website that serves as a virtual bulletin board.  Once you have joined (free) you can create boards for topics that might interest you, like Holiday Recipes, Home Decorating Tips, or Party Planning Projects.  Then you can search the Pinterest website or any other website until your heart is content for ideas to "pin" to those boards that will be saved for you to refer back to at anytime.  

Pinterest is not just for filling one's homes or stomachs though!  For teachers like myself, it can provide unique and creative ideas that can be implemented in the classroom.  Just this past summer, I found and "pinned" the new look for my classroom's Book Corner, and I recently found and "pinned" the handprint snowflake painting that my students completed for our latest Winter Mural on our classroom windows.  On Pinterest you can find ideas for any subject and at any grade level.  You can discover new ways to set up your classroom furniture and materials, establish new techniques for managing behaviors in the classroom, or develop new lessons and activities that align with the Common Core State Standards.

Not only will searching on the Pinterest website lead you to finding that something extra to add to your lesson or to spice up the style of your classroom, but by clicking on the photo of each of your pins you can possibly be directed to its original location.  Often times this will bring you to additional teacher blogs and educational websites for publishers or organizations that can supply you with even more information, guidance, and support.  The possibilities are endless!  

The creation of a tool where teachers can find free ideas in an instant is a dream come true.  I encourage you to become a member by clicking here: https://www.pinterest.com.  You can find your friends on Pinterest and follow specific boards, and I welcome you to find and follow me.  I will warn you though, once you start it is hard to stop and it is fascinating how one minute on Pinterest can easily turn into one hour.  Happy pinning!   

Have you already joined Pinterest?  How has it helped you in the classroom or in other aspects of your teaching career?   

      

Assessing our students: How young is too young, how much is too much?

This past Wednesday, I attended the last day of a three day workshop at the Central New York/Oswego County Teacher Center.  The workshop was designed for pre-kindergarten teachers to discuss lesson development and assessment strategies that can be implemented specifically in the pre-kindergarten classroom.  With the book, Common Formative Assessment: A Toolkit for Professional Learning Communities at Work by Kim Bailey and Chris Jakicic guiding our discussion, each pre-k teacher present at the workshop was given the opportunity to share and learn the similarities and differences among the types of assessments used in varying school districts and early childhood programs in the surrounding area.

Since I started my position as a pre-kindergarten teacher six years ago, I have questioned and continue to question the amount of time spent on formally assessing my three to five year old students, specifically when they are only in my classroom for two and a half hours at a time.  It was reassuring for me to hear that many school districts and programs administer similar benchmark assessments throughout the school year, as well as conduct similar formative assessments throughout the school day and week.  However, while I administer benchmark assessments with my students three times a year (beginning, middle, and end of year), I discovered that other school districts and programs only administer these assessments twice a year (beginning and end of year).  I understand that each school district and program has their own plan established regarding the timeline of when assessments should be completed, and this often is based upon the schedule created by the publisher, which is the case for me.  

I am interested in learning though if any research has been done regarding appropriate methods for assessing our youngest learners; common methods that could be implemented in every pre-kindergarten classroom, and methods that do not take away from the invaluable teacher-directed and student-directed instruction and learning time.  I will post any information that I find on this topic, but I ask if you already know of any current research on this topic that you would like to share?  

I am also interested in hearing how often and what types of assessments are administered across the country.  How do you assess pre-kindergarten students in your school district or program?

      

Please allow me to introduce the kindergartener in the photo . . .

Yes that is me!  Even at five and a half I was in front of a classroom teaching the letters of the alphabet.  Here I am holding the letter P printed on a pink construction paper heart on February 15, 1988.  (Thank you mom for always writing the date and a brief description on the back of each of my childhood photos!)  

My passion for learning and for teaching has been a part of me for as long as I can remember.  Some of my fondest memories as a child include the stacks of books that I would bring to my mom on the couch to read, the large chalkboard in my basement that I would use to "teach" my younger brother, and the word processor that I had on my desk in my bedroom which I would use when pretending to "work."

Today I look into my student's eyes and I cannot help but wonder if a passion for learning is beginning to develop in their pre-kindergarten minds.  Are they building memories that will last them a lifetime?  Are their special moments, like mine in the photo above, being captured for them to hold on to into adulthood?  

These are the questions that I reflect upon as I step into that familiar position in front of my students every day.  Each of my students may only be in my classroom for two and a half hours at a time, but I strive for each minute to be filled with opportunities for them to explore, play, learn, and grow.

And just as my students grow throughout the school year, I grow as a teacher as well.  Times have changed drastically in the twenty five years since the above photo was taken, but one thing remains the same; the passion that an early childhood educator has for the field and for their students.  It is my hope that through this blog we can share our successes and learn from our setbacks, but most importantly, grow together as a strong community of early childhood educators!

~ Julie Bennett